Core III produces and maintains cell culture and disaggregated single cell preparations for the Projects of this Program. The Core also treats preparations as requested by the individual Projects to serve the needs of those Projects (e.g. sustained growth in peptides or catecholamines; adenovirus transfection with specific plasmids). As such, the Core serves a number of functions. First, it relieves the Projects of the cost and time of maintaining and operating individual cell disaggregation and culture facilities. All equipment, supplies and supporting staff are centralized both physically and administratively. Second, it provides the projects with a source of technical expertise when planning experimental designs around cell cultures and single cells. Third, the Core works with Projects to develop and characterize new cell preparations, as required by evolving experimental results.